... but not before the problem has succeeded in wreaking havoc. It happened with e-mail and is happening now with instant messaging and mobile devices...
From my brain:
Really? Havoc? C'mon! Yes, spam is a problem, but my email has never been close to a state of "havoc" because of it, and filters came along pretty quickly. No, they don't work as well as I would like, but they work.
From TFA:
... Here's what VoIP security breaches could mean for consumers. For starters, it's a big channel for spammers...
From my brain:
OK, this is more of a clarification of where the threat arises. Why is a VOIP user more vulnerable to *receiving* SPIT than a non-VOIP user? According to TFA, it's the technology and economics of *making* VOIP calls that will lead to the problem. (FYI, no SPIT from VOIP yet on my two-year old Vonage account; however, I do get regular and annoying SPIT from Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave, who I doubt is using VOIP, because it's not in the Bible.) VOIP calls can do the same damage to landline and cellular phones, can't they?
From TFA:
... Added security vulnerabilities could erode the cost savings associated with VoIP systems...
From my brain:
The cost savings from VOIP, as with many new technologies, are savings in *marginal* costs. Security measures aren't implemented on a per-call basis, so security threats won't affect the marginal cost savings. So, unless the security threats really are grave enough to shut down VOIP systems, I don't see how they can outweigh the cost savings.
From TFA:
... And security companies such as ISS have a financial stake in companies bracing against possible threats. ISS's basic network security now includes VoIP protection. Security software mainstays Symantec (SYMC) and McAfee (MFE) are also said to be working on VoIP security products. Both companies declined to comment for this article...
From my brain:
They have a financial stake? Really? They probably declined comment because they thought they had done more than enough by writing the article.
I'm not sure I buy your last premise: Passing people up because of eccentricity, quirks, or political views will harm employers in the end.
It just seems too general. As an employer, I want to know as much as possible about prospective employees. Some eccentricities, quirks and even political views would lead me to question a prospective employee's value to my organization.
Having said that, I still agree that lots of eccenricities, quirks or political views are irrelevant to job performance, etc. But I'd want to exercise my own judgment about that.
As for how far I'd go to learn about my prospective employees, well, I'd go a different direction than checking out their personal web presence. For example, I might devise interview questions that actually had something to do with evaluating future performance (something almost no employer does, sadly).
Checking out a prospective employee's myspace postings or their web site is just the digital age's equivalent of "so, what do you like to do in your free time?" A nice "warm and fuzzy", but typically a worthless interview question, unless the interviewee says "well, I like to kill kittens and drag them behind me at neo-Nazi parades".
How about a hyperlink that just links to more information? The pop-up photo gallery didn't work for me, beyond the first product displayed. I don't care about the technical reasons why I couldn't use the "next" and "previous" buttons (but, FYI, I use IE6, and lots of pop-ups and javascript thingies work for me). I care about the fact that it's unnecessarily complicated. Just put the info in these newfangled thingies called "web pages" and let users browse them with these other newfangled thingies called "web browsers".
I'm tellin' ya, it could happen... in the year 2000 (cue Conan O'Brien music).
So many places to jump in here... but I actually read the Markey Amendment, which is referenced by George Ou's blog, and it contradicts the part of his scenario that deals with emergency services.
To wit:
. . .
(c) PRESERVED RIGHTS AND EXCEPTIONS.--Nothing in this section shall prevent a broadband network provider from taking reasonable and nondiscriminatory measures to--
blah blah blah
(4) give priority to emergency communications;
While I agree with your reasoning about taking "Life and Death" stuff "off the Internet" (in fact, because I've experienced the effects of a backhoe in the office where I once worked!), the fact is that both "sides" (of a polyhedron?) are guilty of confusing more than they illuminate in this "debate".
One more point, though: isn't it reasonable to expect "the Internet" someday to be worthy of "Life and Death" stuff"? After all, the telephone eventually became reliable enough (though it was more reliable as a monopoly... uh oh, what have I started?).
Translation: "We don't know how to support Linux, so it's Linux's fault."
Managers (PHBs) don't blame the OS, the blame the SysAdmin.
Unfortunately, when the blame game starts, the best defense is still "we're using the industry leader", and it's why FUD is such an appropriate tag for this thread.
I thought libersls favored government intervention. I thought conservatives favored freedom (except when they want to restrict it in the name of freedom -- but that's just neocons, I guess).
And I thought anyone with an open mind could see that both the boycotters and the 'engagers' have valid arguments. In any case, this certainly defies simplification of the liberal/conservative sort. (And, yes, I know my neocon barb was guilty of the same oversimplification.)
You're implying that everything else she has done is "good". Obviously, I disagree! I think I would claim to be better than Bill Gates if he participated in the worlds largest child molestation ring, whether or not it was "christian-inspired".
(Heck, I might claim to be better than Bill Gates just in general; I'm not sure why he's an example of good or bad, just because he's rich.)
In other words, I *was* considering everything she has done, and I see far more harm than good. If you want a role model in India, try Gandhi.
Would you also try to blame Mother Theresa for the spread of AIDS in Africa?
At the risk of losing some positive Karma for wandering off-topic, I *would* blame her for her resistance to the usage of condoms, which is certainly related to the spread of AIDS everywhere.
Comments seem split between "don't pay those bastards a red cent" and "well, if it's worth X, then you should pay it".
Both sentiments seem valid to me.
It's hard to imagine how the business value of the domain name(s) in question could be very high for a business that doesn't yet exist. Unless you plan to make cars and one of the names is cars.com, I don't see how a specific name could be very meaningful.
Come up with something clever, like, I don't know.../.? This site could have been called anythingelsebutshorterthanthissoit'seasytotype.com and had the same success it has as/.
I don't see why the froggy approach is the best direction. Yes, I see the logic in fighting fire with fire. But I've heard that water and foam are also used -- sometimes with good effect -- to fight fires. Sometimes axes are also used.
As an email user, I only care about the second objective. (Don't worry, as an Internet user, I realize my self-interest in supporting the first objective, but it seems more directly relevant to network admins and a "tragedy of the commons" problem for the rest of us.)
Permission-based email starts to make real headway on the second objective, but it doesn't seem to be a common offering. I'm pretty sure one of the Baby Bell ISPs offers it, but I forget which one. Does anyone know more about this and which ISPs might offer it?
Better still, does anyone know of an open-source add-on for mail servers that will do this?
the question is if a reasonable person can see how two things could be likened to one-another then doing so is not hyperbole.
I agree, but it should be obvious that by my original comment I meant that I see no reasonability in the vast majority (apply your own percentage; I wasn't intending this to be a math thread) of "he/she's a Nazi" diatribes that seem to be omnipresent in our public discourse.
Christians are by and large extraordinarily tolerant of disparaging comments.
OK, I agree with that, but quite a few prominent so-called Christian leaders are not. Your statement can be completely true and still consistent with a scenario where James Dobson, Pat Robertson and Bill O'Reilly concoct another "Wag the Dog" War on Christmas story. And if they do, it will get a lot of play. That's how the new media game works. And I still agree with your statement!
In Churchill's time, only the elites had the power to broadcast their words. Today, any idiot (including me) has the power to broadcast.
So, the law may be old, but the misuse of "important" words is exponentially more visible today. Even though I'm proud to say I'm liberal, I don't think this is more prevalent on the right or the left. How many times have we seen people on both sides label someone as a Nazi, for example? Occasionally, there's a thoughtful reason behind that label, but usually it's just hyperbole, because an accurate label wouldn't be inflammatory enough.
The new model, of course, is based on the intangible assets of digital bits, where copies are no longer cheap but free.
and (a few sentences later):
Authors and artists can make (and have made) their livings selling aspects of their works other than inexpensive copies of them. They can sell performances, access to the creator, personalization, add-on information, the scarcity of attention (via ads), sponsorship, periodic subscriptions -- in short, all the many values that cannot be copied.
That's a new business model?
First of all, none of those things are new. Authors and artists in the "failed" business model were free to seel all those things (and did, according to the article). So, at best, the "new" business model is the old one, "lite" (i.e., too bad your main revenue stream is trash; you should still be ok because, um...).
Secondly, if copies are literally free, then subscription models fail, too.
Lastly, if the basic model depends on "free", am I the only one who feels like I'm back at an Internet expo in '98, being told that the product is free and the venture is banking on growing customer relationships?
I'm sure there's a new business model, but I'm pretty sure it's not in TFA.
Ordinary covers a wide range, but I'll bet lots of/.ers will equate ordinary with their own level of technical expertise. (So we'll see a lot of Nick Barnes comments.) That's too deep for a lot of people.
The reality is that Linux has to be as easy as Windows, maybe easier to overcome the natural barriers to switching. (OK, maybe MS Monopoly isn't a "natural" barrier; I meant the natural resistance in most people's minds to change of any kind.)
My idea for a poll on that got rejected, but I agree. I'm curious about what others are doing to replace Google, which is much harder to replace than Yahoo (which I hardly notice is gone).
In America, telco acquiesce to give the US government private information. Yahoo! acquiesces to give the US government search information. For court cases, Yahoo!, telcos, etc routinely cooperate with police officials and hand over information directly to the government for prosecution - often without warrants.
And and decent person should be outraged in all these cases, whether the outrage occurs in China or in the U.S.
"Cost" is difficult to interpret when corn and sugar are involved. Both are so heavily subsidized that it's difficult to say what the true "cost" is.
As with so many alternatives, though, it's just nice to know that when we run out of oil (i.e., when it is so scarce that we're going to sound like our grandfathers when we talk about "gas at only $3 a gallon"), something else might be more economical.
Stuff that's too expensive now (solar, bio, etc.) will eventually be viable. But if it's subsidized heavily, it will be overproduced at some point.
In my experiences, users who don't know crap about IT consistently generate the kinds of user problems noted here, and IT people who don't bother to learn anything about the concerns of their users (and who tend to be like Nick Barnes) create the rest of the problems.
It takes time and effort to understand the other guy, and lots of people are unwilling to do it. Senior management has to set the example, which they often don't (though they like to give it lip service).
One reason why costs might be higher than benefits is that system integrators jumped on SOX (like white on rice) as a pure sales tool. Sales training at all the big firms and even regional players pumped SOX as a great issue, and they caught executives feeling exposed and therefore willing to pay all kinds of money just to feel covered.
I think the mentality created was something like "well, no one ever got fired for protecting the company from SOX", and it didn't matter what it cost. A lot of the people selling "solutions" to this problem had no idea even what it meant, just that executives were scared of SOX.
Slashdot Mirror
From TFA:
... but not before the problem has succeeded in wreaking havoc. It happened with e-mail and is happening now with instant messaging and mobile devices ...
... Here's what VoIP security breaches could mean for consumers. For starters, it's a big channel for spammers ...
... Added security vulnerabilities could erode the cost savings associated with VoIP systems ...
... And security companies such as ISS have a financial stake in companies bracing against possible threats. ISS's basic network security now includes VoIP protection. Security software mainstays Symantec (SYMC) and McAfee (MFE) are also said to be working on VoIP security products. Both companies declined to comment for this article ...
From my brain:
Really? Havoc? C'mon! Yes, spam is a problem, but my email has never been close to a state of "havoc" because of it, and filters came along pretty quickly. No, they don't work as well as I would like, but they work.
From TFA:
From my brain:
OK, this is more of a clarification of where the threat arises. Why is a VOIP user more vulnerable to *receiving* SPIT than a non-VOIP user? According to TFA, it's the technology and economics of *making* VOIP calls that will lead to the problem. (FYI, no SPIT from VOIP yet on my two-year old Vonage account; however, I do get regular and annoying SPIT from Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave, who I doubt is using VOIP, because it's not in the Bible.) VOIP calls can do the same damage to landline and cellular phones, can't they?
From TFA:
From my brain:
The cost savings from VOIP, as with many new technologies, are savings in *marginal* costs. Security measures aren't implemented on a per-call basis, so security threats won't affect the marginal cost savings. So, unless the security threats really are grave enough to shut down VOIP systems, I don't see how they can outweigh the cost savings.
From TFA:
From my brain:
They have a financial stake? Really? They probably declined comment because they thought they had done more than enough by writing the article.
I'm not sure I buy your last premise: Passing people up because of eccentricity, quirks, or political views will harm employers in the end.
It just seems too general. As an employer, I want to know as much as possible about prospective employees. Some eccentricities, quirks and even political views would lead me to question a prospective employee's value to my organization.
Having said that, I still agree that lots of eccenricities, quirks or political views are irrelevant to job performance, etc. But I'd want to exercise my own judgment about that.
As for how far I'd go to learn about my prospective employees, well, I'd go a different direction than checking out their personal web presence. For example, I might devise interview questions that actually had something to do with evaluating future performance (something almost no employer does, sadly).
Checking out a prospective employee's myspace postings or their web site is just the digital age's equivalent of "so, what do you like to do in your free time?" A nice "warm and fuzzy", but typically a worthless interview question, unless the interviewee says "well, I like to kill kittens and drag them behind me at neo-Nazi parades".
How about a hyperlink that just links to more information? The pop-up photo gallery didn't work for me, beyond the first product displayed. I don't care about the technical reasons why I couldn't use the "next" and "previous" buttons (but, FYI, I use IE6, and lots of pop-ups and javascript thingies work for me). I care about the fact that it's unnecessarily complicated. Just put the info in these newfangled thingies called "web pages" and let users browse them with these other newfangled thingies called "web browsers".
... in the year 2000 (cue Conan O'Brien music).
I'm tellin' ya, it could happen
So many places to jump in here ... but I actually read the Markey Amendment, which is referenced by George Ou's blog, and it contradicts the part of his scenario that deals with emergency services.
... uh oh, what have I started?).
To wit:
. . . (c) PRESERVED RIGHTS AND EXCEPTIONS.--Nothing in this section shall prevent a broadband network provider from taking reasonable and nondiscriminatory measures to--
blah blah blah
(4) give priority to emergency communications;
While I agree with your reasoning about taking "Life and Death" stuff "off the Internet" (in fact, because I've experienced the effects of a backhoe in the office where I once worked!), the fact is that both "sides" (of a polyhedron?) are guilty of confusing more than they illuminate in this "debate".
One more point, though: isn't it reasonable to expect "the Internet" someday to be worthy of "Life and Death" stuff"? After all, the telephone eventually became reliable enough (though it was more reliable as a monopoly
Translation: "We don't know how to support Linux, so it's Linux's fault."
Managers (PHBs) don't blame the OS, the blame the SysAdmin.
Unfortunately, when the blame game starts, the best defense is still "we're using the industry leader", and it's why FUD is such an appropriate tag for this thread.
Did someone say "confirmation bias"?
Another case of liberals going overboard.
I thought libersls favored government intervention. I thought conservatives favored freedom (except when they want to restrict it in the name of freedom -- but that's just neocons, I guess).
And I thought anyone with an open mind could see that both the boycotters and the 'engagers' have valid arguments. In any case, this certainly defies simplification of the liberal/conservative sort. (And, yes, I know my neocon barb was guilty of the same oversimplification.)
You're implying that everything else she has done is "good". Obviously, I disagree! I think I would claim to be better than Bill Gates if he participated in the worlds largest child molestation ring, whether or not it was "christian-inspired".
(Heck, I might claim to be better than Bill Gates just in general; I'm not sure why he's an example of good or bad, just because he's rich.)
In other words, I *was* considering everything she has done, and I see far more harm than good. If you want a role model in India, try Gandhi.
Would you also try to blame Mother Theresa for the spread of AIDS in Africa?
At the risk of losing some positive Karma for wandering off-topic, I *would* blame her for her resistance to the usage of condoms, which is certainly related to the spread of AIDS everywhere.
Comments seem split between "don't pay those bastards a red cent" and "well, if it's worth X, then you should pay it".
... /.? This site could have been called anythingelsebutshorterthanthissoit'seasytotype.com and had the same success it has as /.
Both sentiments seem valid to me.
It's hard to imagine how the business value of the domain name(s) in question could be very high for a business that doesn't yet exist. Unless you plan to make cars and one of the names is cars.com, I don't see how a specific name could be very meaningful.
Come up with something clever, like, I don't know
I found it amazingly similar to Plato's idea ...
I think that's because you followed the advice above and rolled your own.
Is there an emoticon for rolling your own?
I don't see why the froggy approach is the best direction. Yes, I see the logic in fighting fire with fire. But I've heard that water and foam are also used -- sometimes with good effect -- to fight fires. Sometimes axes are also used.
As an email user, I only care about the second objective. (Don't worry, as an Internet user, I realize my self-interest in supporting the first objective, but it seems more directly relevant to network admins and a "tragedy of the commons" problem for the rest of us.)
Permission-based email starts to make real headway on the second objective, but it doesn't seem to be a common offering. I'm pretty sure one of the Baby Bell ISPs offers it, but I forget which one. Does anyone know more about this and which ISPs might offer it?
Better still, does anyone know of an open-source add-on for mail servers that will do this?
the question is if a reasonable person can see how two things could be likened to one-another then doing so is not hyperbole.
I agree, but it should be obvious that by my original comment I meant that I see no reasonability in the vast majority (apply your own percentage; I wasn't intending this to be a math thread) of "he/she's a Nazi" diatribes that seem to be omnipresent in our public discourse.
Christians are by and large extraordinarily tolerant of disparaging comments.
OK, I agree with that, but quite a few prominent so-called Christian leaders are not. Your statement can be completely true and still consistent with a scenario where James Dobson, Pat Robertson and Bill O'Reilly concoct another "Wag the Dog" War on Christmas story. And if they do, it will get a lot of play. That's how the new media game works. And I still agree with your statement!
both Churhill [sic] and Hitler ...
In Churchill's time, only the elites had the power to broadcast their words. Today, any idiot (including me) has the power to broadcast.
So, the law may be old, but the misuse of "important" words is exponentially more visible today. Even though I'm proud to say I'm liberal, I don't think this is more prevalent on the right or the left. How many times have we seen people on both sides label someone as a Nazi, for example? Occasionally, there's a thoughtful reason behind that label, but usually it's just hyperbole, because an accurate label wouldn't be inflammatory enough.
I actually read TFA (TWFA), and all I see is:
...).
The new model, of course, is based on the intangible assets of digital bits, where copies are no longer cheap but free.
and (a few sentences later):
Authors and artists can make (and have made) their livings selling aspects of their works other than inexpensive copies of them. They can sell performances, access to the creator, personalization, add-on information, the scarcity of attention (via ads), sponsorship, periodic subscriptions -- in short, all the many values that cannot be copied.
That's a new business model?
First of all, none of those things are new. Authors and artists in the "failed" business model were free to seel all those things (and did, according to the article). So, at best, the "new" business model is the old one, "lite" (i.e., too bad your main revenue stream is trash; you should still be ok because, um
Secondly, if copies are literally free, then subscription models fail, too.
Lastly, if the basic model depends on "free", am I the only one who feels like I'm back at an Internet expo in '98, being told that the product is free and the venture is banking on growing customer relationships?
I'm sure there's a new business model, but I'm pretty sure it's not in TFA.
Sulery, you meant: Animar Falm and the Bibre, no?
Ordinary covers a wide range, but I'll bet lots of /.ers will equate ordinary with their own level of technical expertise. (So we'll see a lot of Nick Barnes comments.) That's too deep for a lot of people.
The reality is that Linux has to be as easy as Windows, maybe easier to overcome the natural barriers to switching. (OK, maybe MS Monopoly isn't a "natural" barrier; I meant the natural resistance in most people's minds to change of any kind.)
Scientists who would have liked to study the bear are not so lucky.
Well, they were luckier than the bear.
My idea for a poll on that got rejected, but I agree. I'm curious about what others are doing to replace Google, which is much harder to replace than Yahoo (which I hardly notice is gone).
In America, telco acquiesce to give the US government private information. Yahoo! acquiesces to give the US government search information. For court cases, Yahoo!, telcos, etc routinely cooperate with police officials and hand over information directly to the government for prosecution - often without warrants.
And and decent person should be outraged in all these cases, whether the outrage occurs in China or in the U.S.
Morality is not geographic.
but to make a big case out a small, and common occurrence (that we know about mind you) seems silly.
You have it bass ackwards. You're making a small case out of a big (and common) one. Freedom of speech is something we deem fundamental and universal.
When we lose the capacity to care about injustice, what good are we?
where a revolution brings it back way up
...
Not always. French, Russian, Chinese revolutions (arguably the Big 3) all suppressed freedom.
Those who ignore the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them, or something like that
"Cost" is difficult to interpret when corn and sugar are involved. Both are so heavily subsidized that it's difficult to say what the true "cost" is.
As with so many alternatives, though, it's just nice to know that when we run out of oil (i.e., when it is so scarce that we're going to sound like our grandfathers when we talk about "gas at only $3 a gallon"), something else might be more economical.
Stuff that's too expensive now (solar, bio, etc.) will eventually be viable. But if it's subsidized heavily, it will be overproduced at some point.
There's just no substitute, on both "sides".
In my experiences, users who don't know crap about IT consistently generate the kinds of user problems noted here, and IT people who don't bother to learn anything about the concerns of their users (and who tend to be like Nick Barnes) create the rest of the problems.
It takes time and effort to understand the other guy, and lots of people are unwilling to do it. Senior management has to set the example, which they often don't (though they like to give it lip service).
One reason why costs might be higher than benefits is that system integrators jumped on SOX (like white on rice) as a pure sales tool. Sales training at all the big firms and even regional players pumped SOX as a great issue, and they caught executives feeling exposed and therefore willing to pay all kinds of money just to feel covered.
I think the mentality created was something like "well, no one ever got fired for protecting the company from SOX", and it didn't matter what it cost. A lot of the people selling "solutions" to this problem had no idea even what it meant, just that executives were scared of SOX.
Fear is a great motivator.